EDIT: Spoilers open

Welcome to the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club. Our 24th game of 2023 is Jusant. The target completion date is November 20, 2023.

We ask that until that date you use the forum software to mark any spoilers, either story based or mechanical, in the discussion below. Ideally the bulk of the discussion will occur after November 20, but if you want to comment before then you are welcome to so long as the spoilers are marked. We ask that if you leave a comment before that date you also come back to the thread after it to read other people’s comments and respond to them, though of course we cannot force you to do so.

All are welcome to participate regardless of whether you have stated a preference to or not and there is absolutely no commitment. You do not have to finish the game to participate but please let us know if you have not.

You are also free to come back any time after the completion date and share your thoughts! This club is meant to be open to all whenever you want to join in the fun!

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What is Jusant?

An exploration game about climbing a giant rocky tower in the aftermath of severe drought.

How long is Jusant?

How long to beat lists it as 4 hours long.

Based on collectible tracking, I'm about 2/3rds of the way through and really loving everything about it so far. I am already a pretty big DONTNOD fan, and seeing them step out of their usual game style and completely nail it has me even more excited for what they could do next.

I played the demo when it released and found the game interesting but wasn't sure if it would hook me. Felt a bit rough at first because of the controls, I assume it's what you'd call animation priority, it was a bit awkward at first but I quickly came to enjoy it and in a game like this you need a detailed movement system, you can't just take the Assassin's Creed climbing system and expect it to work here.

As you finish the first chapter the systems seem thin but new climbing mechanics are added at a steady pace through most of the game. Many are situational but some only persist for a chapter, this works for making the gameplay interesting throughout but I thought they might all come back for one final challenge at the end of the game.

I have to admit I skipped through most of the readables. I was able to follow the story from the unvoiced cinematics but I only figured out at the end of chapter 4 that Bianca's diary provides the story of the drought, maybe I'll go back and read those. I like readables but its a lot of text which isn't gameplay critical for a short linear game.

Then there's the ending which I thought was sweet and emotional, a nice ending for a cute, visually and mechanically engaging game.

I feel like the odd one out but I didn't really like this game. It wasn't awful but I found it pretty boring. The graphics were beautiful and most of the moment to moment climbing was at least okay but I had some serious issues with the pacing and I found exploring for collectables so annoying that I gave up on it, which I rarely do. I also gave up on reading the messages because they were numerous and inane.

But my real issues with Jusant come down to some of the gameplay choices. I thought the stamina bar was awful. Basically it exists just to force you to sit there and do nothing periodically to recharge it, or face the risk of having it run down and making the game incredibly unfun until you recharge it. It didn't add to challenge or create a risk reward dynamic, it just penalized you by forcing you to stay still or ruining your climb. It's the kind of half-baked terrible mechanic I've come to expect from Dontnod, a developer that makes games that are really interesting to look at and often have good narrative but are often unfun to play (to be fair I thought Remember Me was just mediocre, and not unfun. Vampyr is pretty unfun, in part because it also has a bad stamina bar, although at least there it makes more sense.)

I also thought that the buds that wilt in sunlight often didn't give enough time considering how inaccurate the controls can be, and I hated how the bugs you ride would lose stamina and force you to wait for another one to come by. So many of this game's mechanics are just about forcing the player to wait, doing nothing. It's all the worst parts of stealth games with none of the tension. The game is most fun when you are just free climbing and following a path but the developers were like "no, too enjoyable, let's add a nice big dose of enforced boredom."

Meanwhile there's very little that requires timing or careful planning or anything. The vast majority of the game is just find the path, follow the path. That's okay, but it makes the "slow down" mechanics even more infuriating.

To be fair to the game some of the mechanics involving placing pinions and having to lower or raise yourself to create swinging angles were pretty good, and created some moments of freeform problem solving. It looks really nice and has a decent vibe. The wind stuff in the second to last area could be cool but was underexplored. As I said, it's not awful. I do understand why some people like it.

NOW BACK TO COMPLAINING! While the game isn't buggy it can feel a little buggy at times. Part of that is the weird fact that there are stations for your safety line throughout the game and they are supposed to show you where you can climb but if you manage to climb or jump off something away from one of those stations your line will just attach itself to the wall anywhere (often in a way where it's not actually attached.) I say "manage to" because at times the game doesn't want to let you jump off stuff without a line attached, but you can find ways to do it. It just feels like the intent was to force you to attach a line to a station, but that didn't quite work so they gave up and made this weird system. It's not a bug it's just a strange choice.

Also the shells suck and I don't think you can break out of them.

I did really want to like this one, but it annoyed me too much. I also really hated all the written stuff (to the point where I stopped reading, which, again, I almost never do.) I'm glad others enjoyed it more.

I completed Jusant and think it might be able to sneak in as an honorable mention on my GOTY list and is maybe one of my favorite things I have played as part of the Game Pass Game Club. I like the slow burn on the Apocalyptic setting and the fact the game doesn't give you all of the facts about its world and surroundings all at once. That even is part of the strengths of the game as a storytelling device; you have to be the one to work to summit mountains and cliffs to get even marginal rewards on knowing what is up.

With the controls, they are very QWOP-like, but I found that to be in the game's favor once again. The story wants you to buy into the idea that there is a relationship between the nameless protagonist and the wall of rock you climb, and for me, I think the controls work to establish that.

I enjoyed this well enough for what it is, but I don't think this is a game that will stick with me or anything. It looks nice, the gameplay was engaging to a degree, and your little buddy is very cute, but I can't really say I was particularly moved or anything. As just a quick four hour thing with some nice art it was good, but not really much more than that for me.

EDIT: I would like to add that, even though this game didn't exactly blow me away, I remain a big fan of Don't Nod. I really like that they seem to have a commitment to delivering both on "indie scale" games like this, Tell Me Why, and their Life is Strange games, as well working on more ambitious traditional style games with AA budget like Vampyr and the upcoming Banishers. I will always be paying attention when they put something out.

I see that they've now added a no stamina mode to the game. I probably would not have used it because I have a stubborn tendency to just stick with defaults on that kind of thing, but I think it would address one of my main irritations with the game and is more in line with the rest of the game's vibe (again stamina doesn't really add challenge, just annoyance and frustration here.)

They claim it's part of "accessibility" but I don't really think that it's an accessibility issue because all stamina management requires you to do is stop moving periodically to recharge. I think adding an analog stick only climbing mode (which they also did) is clearly an accessibility thing but the no stamina mode seems more like some people (me) did not like it so they added the ability to turn it off. Which...good for them.

Anyway if I had played the game without stamina I think I would have enjoyed it more. It's not that it was a huge hinderance to me it's more that every time I paused and just hung there waiting for it to refill I asked "why do I have to do this? What purpose does it serve" and it made me a little mad.

Didn't really like the game's frustrating Mount Your Friends-esque mechanics, so I couldn't power through the whole thing, but I consider the experience a net positive because of this screen I grabbed of this adorable crab.

I'm one month removed from this, but I still wanted to jot down my feelings:

I absolutely adored this game, but I was in full collectathon mode the entire time. I found all but one of the diary entries; the one being from very early in the game before I had really understood what was happening. For the first two-thirds of the game, I was enthralled by the way you are exploring someone's prior experiences and history while seeing the way time had eroded the civilization. The climbing mechanic was merely the tool to explore, not a hinderance to the gameplay.

But then, the game introduced wind and stamina started to matter more, and the frictionless action of climbing actually became something to pay attention to, and my patience with the game started to drain. I never found the game difficult, but I would regularly have to physically rest my fingers while playing. During the final hour, I had to pause the game and take a break a number of times because my hands just couldn't really keep up. This didn't hinder the impact of the story, or the final act though. Once I got to the tower, the climbing went back to being simple.

Overall, I still greatly enjoyed the game, but I should look into the accessibility options before recommending it to people. 4/5 Stars.